


A House Awake with Shadows and Monsters

by charleybradburies



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Character Death, Children, Comics/Movie Crossover, Community: 1_million_words, Community: be_compromised, F/M, Family Loss, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Death in Childbirth, Loss, Male-Female Friendship, Marvel Comics - Freeform, Not Canon Compliant, Other, POV Alternating, POV Clint Barton, POV Female Character, POV Male Character, POV Natasha Romanov, Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Post-Canon, Post-Loss, Secret Identity, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, To Be Continued, not canon compliant by any stretch of the imagination really
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 10:47:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4743470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charleybradburies/pseuds/charleybradburies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <span class="small">Another not-yet-finished be_compromised Promptathon piece. I apologize for the unfinished-ness, but I do hope these chapters are enough to at least pique somebody's interest.</span>
</p><p>Natasha is the Widow. Clint is a widower.</p><p>Title from Halsey's "Control."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Four times.

He’s apologized for cutting off Kate’s circulation four times before anyone tells them anything. 

Complications, more complications. Another doctor was coming. Critical condition. He can’t quite hear them, he doesn't have the focus for that - all he hears is that his wife is in danger and they aren’t doing enough. They won’t even let him in, won’t let anyone in, but Laura’s his _wife,_ dammit, and he needs to see her. Needs to know that she’s there, needs more than Tony’s background checks on the hospital staff. 

Healthy woman, healthy baby. Nothing awry. That’s what they’d said two days ago. 

And they’d been fucking _wrong._

And now they won’t even own up to that shit. 

Five times. 

Kate berates him for trying to apologize again. Everything but her and the anger is a blur. 

“I’m incredibly sorry, Mr Barton,” is the last thing Clint remembers hearing before he lunges upwards, and then blacks out. 

He wakes up in the Avengers Tower twenty-three hours later, alone except for Kate, curled up like a cat at the end of the massive bed in his room. He kicks out reflexively, and she startles awake. When she looks up at him, she looks like she’s been crying.

“Laura?” he chokes out, and Kate solemnly shakes her head.

+

His mother-in-law Dorothy is there by the time Kate finally drags him out of his room - all delicate makeup, sharp edges, and leather boots.

“Clinton!” she pulls him into a tight, desperate hug, before yanking Kate in, too. “Katherine.”

Kate’s the one who manages to pull away first, but eventually Dolly lets go of both Hawkeyes.

“Commander Hill is bringing the, uh, rugrats over,” Pietro informs them all, and Wanda sends him a harsh glare. _Always freaky, seeing them disagree._

“Good to know,” Clint says, his voice cracking from disuse. 

The Tower is decorated with scads of flowers - Wanda’s touch, he’s assured - and piles of cards that Clint can’t be arsed to read. (Kate promises she’ll do it for him.) Tony’s kitchen-ceiling-high custom gift basket serves as breakfast for everyone present.

No one says Laura’s name, not even Dolly. Six months ago the Avengers hadn’t even known his farm existed, and now they were sending Hill there like it was a base, like it was totally appropriate for his kids to be escorted somewhere via quinjet, for Laura’s mother to offer to cut up cantaloupe for superheroes. There’d been reasons he’d kept them out of all this. 

What had they been worth?

+

He’s never been happier to see his kids. Never.

Carol’s holding Petra - apparently she’d designated herself the temporary babysitter - and Cooper’s hand, until he darts forward and damn near knocks Clint over. Lila, in one of Kate’s many Hawkeye logo shirts and a skirt that even Clint knows doesn’t match, runs to Kate instead, not to be outdone. She demands to be picked up after Cooper reluctantly releases their father, and Clint hoists her up into his arms. She wraps her arms around his neck like she’ll never let go, and Kate ruffles Cooper’s hair. 

Petra’s beautiful, just as beautiful as he’d first thought, in those few moments before it had been decided that _\- no, don’t think about it, just don’t think about it. Don’t think about how Laura had been perfectly -_

He can feel his thoughts being redirected back to the present after having drifted away, and finds Wanda to see her with pursed lips and a slightly raised hand. 

_Well, let’s face it: this really is not the worst thing she could be using her powers for._

He manages the slightest of smiles.


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha starts to go hoarse with yelling into her mouthpiece before she decides to look for Alexi and James herself, mission complication be damned. They were a team, for fuck’s sake, and they were going to work like one. It wasn’t like she’d left some SHIELD asshole alive to be tracking her, anyway; she wouldn’t be followed. 

But her husband had been, she soon finds out. She nearly trips over a discarded earwig in a corridor darkened by having had its overhead lights shot up, and Alexi groans her name from the end of the hall.

“Dammit,” she hears James curse, and she rushes down to find him bent over Alexi’s bleeding torso, trying and failing to put enough pressure on his wound. 

Alexi reaches out for both her hands as she kneels down on his other side, stopping her from putting one of them atop James’s.

“Stop, friend, stop. It won’t be worth it,” he moans, his voice weak and coarse, and Natasha feels the tears building in her throat. 

_They said this would be simple. Get in, get out, and over._

She shushes him. 

“Get out. Take what you’ve got, take my gun, get out,” he chokes out, to neither of them in particular.

“We’re not going to leave you here to die, my dear,” Nat protests, pushing her luck by looking into his eyes, which only brings tears to hers and weakens her argument. 

“Yes, my love, you are. Natalia, I am ordering you to leave, both of you.”

She doesn’t remember having heard him so stern before, but she supposes all dying men must be, at some point. Her chest hurts with the knowledge, but when she leans forward and presses a soft kiss to his lips, they are cold, and her tears become more rapid; she can soon taste their salt.

James puts a hand on her shoulder, and she knows he’s given up. _Orders. He’s received orders. The Winter Soldier is trained to first and foremost follow orders._

_The Black Widow is trained to follow orders._

_I am the Black Widow._

She shakes, but she stands up, and lets her husband’s hand fall from hers. James grabs Alexi’s pistol from the floor next to him - next to his _body_ \- and she shuts out everything she can as she lets him pull her away by the forearm, focusing only on her own weapon, clenched in one rageful fist.

+

_Brooklyn,_ James declares a few days later, once they’ve well and truly overstayed their welcome at their hotel. _I’m from Brooklyn, I think. Maybe there’s something there for us in New York._

 _There is nothing for me,_ she wants to say, but she knows better. He will take her with him anyway; he will not leave her to her own devices, not after deciding to evade HYDRA. 

_There is something for everyone in New York,_ he tells her, because he knows what she’s thinking without her having to say it. That’s how teams are, how partners are, and now...they’re partners.

+

Buchanan and Natalie Rushman move into a two-bedroom apartment two weeks later. Twins, they tell people, and sometimes there are odd looks, but everyone makes their own assumptions about what they mean when they’re say they’re all that’s left of their family. Besides, they both have that haunted look to them, when they aren’t trying to hide it.

No one comments on the wedding ring that can sometimes be seen hanging around her neck.

+

No one, that is, until James convinces her to apply for the damned secretarial job at Stark Industries. He’s entirely sure that their fake backgrounds are clean enough that she’ll pass muster - she’s a spy, it’s not as though she doesn’t have hers memorized - and it’s the best offer around, really, since she doesn’t want to work retail and honestly doesn’t have the credentials for much else.

But working for anyone involved with SHIELD is a mistake, point blank, whether James thinks so or not, because Pepper Potts herself can see right through people. She doesn’t always seem to know that she can, though, which is immensely convenient. 

“It’s a beautiful ring, you know,” is how she starts the question, and Nat doesn’t startle though her heart does beat a bit faster.

“Your file doesn’t say anything about being married.”

“I’m not, and um, I don’t really like to talk about it,” Nat manages, and Pepper’s response indicates that she believes she knows what Natasha means by that.

She’s so entirely nice about it that Nat admits to herself that Pepper’s probably not all wrong.

+

As all good things do, the facade starts falling apart eventually. Pepper throws the S.I. employees a Christmas Eve party, and even though they’d supposedly had their own bash, her goddamned Avenger boyfriend brings the life of his own party to them.

James doesn’t make it out before Captain America recognizes him, and even though their reunion isn’t in bad spirits, it’s only a matter of time before the truth comes out. Not all that surprisingly, he’s willing to keep the fact that James and Nat are unrelated to himself, but in a room of spies and secret agents, hiding the fact that he doesn’t know the twin sister of his childhood best friend isn’t exactly possible.

Agent 33, whom Nat is certain recognizes her soon after seeing her, is the one who joins her in the ladies’ room and stops her from devising any legitimate plan of escape. Natasha is just drunk enough not to remember much about how it happened later, but she starts off 2016 with a probationary job for people who are still her enemies.

+

She tells herself she’s freelancing, but really, it can’t be called freelancing when there are deportation and death threats over your head and your best friend’s. Not that she thinks Rogers would really let anyone follow through on them, but the point remains that the few months they’ve spent in New York have been the closest she’s ever come to having a life of her own design. 

Thus, it follows that she finds that once people stop looking at her like she’s going to murder them any second - which she could, in theory, but most of them haven’t given her any reason, and well, she knows better than that - it’s not all that bad. She even gets to hack a database, something that hasn’t been a task of hers in too long.

It’s when Stark is trying to hack HYDRA that she really stops pretending she’s not a spy. _She used to be HYDRA,_ she tells him too easily. _If SHIELD puts her back on the map, she can get the job done, and they might even save themselves some trouble._

Emphasis on the _might._


End file.
